France requires a plane for Ryanair until it returns some subsidies

The Directorate General of French Civil Aviation has required a Ryanair aircraft at the Bordeaux airport to force the Irish airline to return some grants received in 2008 and 2009, declared illegal by the European Commission. The decision also involved the 149 passengers who had to board the plane to fly to London, to which Ryanair moved to another flight five hours later.

The Charente department claims 525,000 euros to the low cost airline for the assistance received to operate the Angouleme airport in 2008 and 2009, which Brussels declared illegal on July 23, 2014 "The plane is stationary until when the requested sum is not paid, "sources of the French aviation supervisor told Efe.

The authorities expect the "low cost" to pay the amount requested this Friday and insist that the decision to appeal to justice be considered as "the last resort" after failures to recover money. In fact, France had not implemented this measure for at least a decade.

In any case, the French administration insisted that with the immobilisation of Ryanair aircraft they reaffirmed "their willingness to guarantee conditions of fair competition between airlines and airports".

In fact, Ryanair had announced at the end of September the opening of two bases in France, one in Marseille and one in Bordeaux, seven years after leaving those in the country due to French judgments of justice against their employment contracts. Now the company plans to count in April 2019 with two aircraft in Bordeaux and will operate 70 weekly flights.